The Creepiest Unresolved Mysteries That Will Give You Goosebumps

These 20 Unresolved Mysteries Will Give You Goosebumps (#7 Will Scare The Crap Out Of You)

An unknown, unidentified body is found, lying peacefully, yet very much dead, on a beach in Adelaide, South Australia. A cigarette behind his ear, a bus ticket in his pocket, but nowhere to go. What brought this man to the beach? What was the cause of his death? And who the hell is he in the first place?

A magical platter from the Bronze Age is discovered in a Minoan palace, covered in unique signs and markings. And yet, nobody has managed to decipher it.

Unsolved mysteries are a fascinating yet frustrating thing to research. Murder mysteries with absolutely no evidence or suspects, ciphertexts without cipher keys. But nobody could ever argue they wouldn’t be drawn in by the unknown, X-File style.

Amelia Earhart's Disappearance

Amelia Earhart was an early aviation pioneer, and the first woman to fly over the Atlantic by herself. But when she disappeared in 1937 during an attempt to circumnavigate the earth, and touched off over 70 years of speculation as to what happened.

Shards of bone were found in a South Pacific island she might have touched down on. And now, the group that's been investigating her disappearance for decades, The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), claim they've found definitive proof that she ended up on the island of Nikumaroro.

The group points to a piece of aluminum sheeting found on the island they say was used as a patch on Earhart's place before she died. Under this scenario, Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan would have crash-landed on the then-uninhabited reef, survived the crash before eventually dying. TIGHAR is now headed for a more thorough search in 2015 to see if they can find the rest of the plane.

It looks like what happened to Earhart might finally be solved. But for every time a mystery is solved, there are dozens more (or in this case, 19 more) that remain mysteries forever. Click through to read up on history's greatest puzzles that we may never solve.

D.B. Cooper

An unknown, unidentified body is found, lying peacefully, yet very much dead, on a beach in Adelaide, South Australia. A cigarette behind his ear, a bus ticket in his pocket, but nowhere to go. What brought this man to the beach? What was the cause of his death? And who the hell is he in the first place?

A magical platter from the Bronze Age is discovered in a Minoan palace, covered in unique signs and markings. And yet, nobody has managed to decipher it.

Unsolved mysteries are a fascinating yet frustrating thing to research. Murder mysteries with absolutely no evidence or suspects, ciphertexts without cipher keys. But nobody could ever argue they wouldn’t be drawn in by the unknown, X-File style.

D.B. Cooper hijacked an airplane in 1971. And he was damn good at it, because he has yet to be found. He demanded $200,000 in ransom while on the flight, and just parachuted straight out of there. Nobody has managed to identify him. And of course D.B. Cooper is just an alias, too.

The Wow! Signal

In 1977, Jerry R. Ehman heard aliens while working on a project using the Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio. Well, at least it wasn’t anything terrestrial he heard, and it was never heard again. The signal came from somewhere near the Sagittarius constellation, and it is not clear to this day if it wasn’t just some “space noise.”

Zodiac Killer

Seven men and women were the victims of brutal murders in northern California in the late 1960s. To this day, the cases remain open. All we are left with is mysterious signs and horrifying letters left behind by the murderer. The case was even adapted on the big screen.

Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?

In 1943, four boys discovered a human skull inside the bark of an elm. Sounds like a great horror fiction movie, doesn’t it? Well, lucky for you (unlucky for the skull), this happened for real. The death was followed by mysterious graffiti showing up around the small town in Wychbury Hill in the UK.

Voynich Manuscript

Dating back to the early 1400s, the Voynich manuscript has remained one of the most famous examples of unresolved cryptography headaches. There’s been a huge amount of speculation surrounding the manuscript, including some who write it off as pure nonsense.

Elisa Lam

Watch this YouTube video. We dare you. WHAT ARE HER HANDS DOING AROUND THE 2 MINUTE MARK? Are you afraid? Deeply afraid? Did we mention she was found a couple of days later in the water tank of the hotel she was staying in? Questions on top of questions…

Oak Island

Who doesn’t like a nice treasure hunt mystery? Oak Island on the southern shores of Nova Scotia is said to contain a treasure of immensurate value dug deep below its surface. Efforts to dig it up have proved fruitless -- the further people dig, the more the hole fills with water. There’s even a History Channel program about it.

Taman Shud Case

A murder case straight out of a Camus novel, the Taman Shud case is guaranteed to make you, well, shudder in delight. A man was found dead on a beach in Adelaide, Australia, with his feet crossed, cigarette behind his ear, and a bus ticket in his pocket. Nobody has yet found out who the man was, or why he died.

Numbers Station

This one will keep you awake for a while. What if we told you there were radio stations that send out seemingly random messages, lists of numbers, robot voices and phonetic alphabet passages? Unfortunately for you, they exist. And no government will ever reveal why they exist in the first place.

Murder of Jon Benét Ramsey

The now-famous case of 6-year-old pageant contestant Jon Benét Ramsey’s death has yet to be solved. DNA suggests it wasn’t her affluent parents who left her in the basement of her family home, knocked over the head and strangled. So then who did it?

Roanoake Colony

In the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to conquer some of that precious New World land. But the colonists started disappearing. New arrivals found nothing but skeletons and bodily remains -- the colony itself wiped out.

Piri Reis Map

Created in 1513, the Ottoman admiral and cartographer had something in mind. What exactly he had in mind beyond recreating a crude world map (with the addition of the New World), we have yet to find out. What do the inscribed notes on the margins mean?

The Arthur's Seat Coffins

Burke and Hare are famous in Edinburgh, Scotland, not because they tried haggis in the 1800s, but because they murdered and sold bodies to Edinburgh’s Medical School. In 1836, five boys stumbled upon 17 mini-coffins, containing small figurines made out of wood.

Devil's Footprints

Strange markings in the snow were found in 1855 in South Devon, England. They were shaped like hoofs, 4 inches across, 6 to 8 inches apart in single file. But these footprints couldn’t have originated from any known animal. It must have been Satan himself. Or was it?

Beale Ciphers

Phaistos Disc

Dating back to the late Bronze Age, the 6-inch platter is covered in strange and mysterious symbols. Nobody has deciphered it yet, and of course, many questions have been raised surrounding its authenticity.